‘We all adore him, of course,’ she concedes. ‘But you haven’t let his faults surface. You still think he’s perfect. It’s like he was made in a lab.’
My brain sets to work, trying to cough up any of Fraser’s annoying traits just to satisfy her, but it backfires.
‘He restacks the dishwasher after I’ve done it,’ I argue.
‘That’s not a fault, Audrey. I’ve seen the way you stack dish-washers.’
‘He dogears the pages of books!’
‘He reads actual books.’
‘Listen, why don’tyoumarry him if you’re determined to defend him?’
She changes gears. ‘It’s just you’ve been hurt so many times …’
‘I hurtmyselfall those times,’ I explain. One mega betrayal at university saw me smack every attempt at a close connection since.Don’t let them in. Men invariably let you down.
Until now, when Fraser elevates every aspect of my existence.
‘Maybe it’s that you have been hurt too little,’ I suggest. ‘Only once! And it scared you off everyone, forever. It’s me who worries aboutyou. It’s hard to see you lonely.’
She gets the same look in her eyes that she always does when I raise Phoebe. The one woman to break her heart. She was twenty-two and an entirely different person back then. Intoxicatingly in love, which led to burns so deep she never recovered.
‘I’m notyou,’ I remind her. ‘Fraser isn’t Phoebe. We’re not in our twenties …’
Sara’s now silent.Have I gone too far?
‘Look, is this a house of cards? Maybe? But there are never guarantees. I’m going into this with my heart open and my eyes wide. I’m not walking away from the best thing that’s ever happened to me on the off chance that something goes wrong.’
The next month passes in a whirlwind of phone calls and bookings, finding my dress, organising catering and flowers and invitations. Parker and I ramble for hours near Googong, where her friend Rose lives, collecting fallen eucalyptus leaves in soft greens and pinks and greys and using a hole punch to make baskets of environmentally friendly confetti.
It’s the Thursday before the big day when I miss the first call. And the second. I’m on the first official video chat with the final complement of the Plagiarism Task Force, as the seventeen of us have dramatically labelled ourselves.
‘Shouldn’t I join in after the wedding?’ I asked Fraser a few days ago, while we were finalising the honeymoon arrangements. We’ve booked a few days down at the beachside haven of Mollymook, at a famous clifftop hotel called Bannisters, a place I’ve longed to visit for years.
But it had taken weeks for the group to align our schedules, and it was just an introductory call to get the ball rolling—nevertheless I was still trying to slide out of it. ‘This has held you captive for more than a decade,’ he reminded me. ‘It’s an hour out of your day.’
‘He was so clever the way he did it,’ Maya says, black hair fixed with a pencil on top of her head. ‘If you listen to the art song he wrote for the opening of that new concert hall in Brisbane, it’s like he’s lifted aspects of my opening stanza, but before that takes hold, he’s introduced several bars clearly inspired by Belle’s piece.Is he joking?Did he think we wouldn’t stitch this all together?’
To be fair, stitching this together has taken us years. He very nearly did get away with it and still might.
‘Why didn’t we?’ Annie asks.
‘Because he never took enough of any of our stuff—except Audrey’s—for us to really question it. In retrospect, I don’t think he’s put together a single idea of his own. Ever. He’s like the Wizard of Oz. All bluff, no actual power.’
My phone is vibrating on the table beside me. Hopefully they’ll leave a voicemail, because this situation is fascinating and infuriating. Fraser was right—the idea of us coming together like this and getting justice and closure …and my dream back… is the most stimulating, enticing, exciting, terrifying situation I’ve ever found myself in. It’s almost exciting enough to distract me from the wedding dress and veil hanging in the doorway beyond the laptop, as if the two experiences—finding my voice at last and officially connecting my life with the man I love—are on some wildly thrilling mutual trajectory.
‘We’ll only get one shot at this,’ I say. ‘He can have no warning or time to prepare.’ I shiver, thinking about how my last attempt was foiled. And by whom.
‘Yes! A concerted attack! All the evidence in one place, so it’s impossible to disprove,’ Belle agrees, enthusiastically. ‘Password-protected folder in the cloud? Everyone uploads original compositions beside his, along with a detailed note analysing the specific aspects that he’s taken and any other evidence we can find? Assignment notes? Feedback? Early development of the pieces if you still have those?’
‘And then we should take this to a lawyer,’ Annie suggests. ‘Agreed?’
Agreed.
Our path set, the conversation shifts into a more general chat about what everyone is up to these days, which plays out like a catalogue of all the paths I didn’t take. The more they divulge, the angrier with myself I become. I’m proud of my teaching. I enjoy it. I’m good at it. But when I hear what they’ve accomplished—not just playing and writing classical music but getting it produced or performed at elite levels—all I can think is that I am the only one who gave up.Was I so crushed by Josh’s betrayal I let it swamp everything?
‘What about you, Audrey?’ one of them asks, when the question can be avoided no longer. I don’t answer immediately, distracted by the missed calls, all of which I now notice are from school, along with a text saying Parker isn’t well.Please God, don’t let it be gastro! We have a wedding on Saturday!
